PROOFREAD my long letter to Toyota!

[Lomeinhu]

This was HEAVY editing...


"To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you to voice my concern over Toyota

[kuno]

I would leave out all the stuff that sounds like "speculation", keep it factual.

[dawgg]

it's interesting that u bring this up. I was recently asked by Toyota to join a seminar that will be held this monday. I believe the focus is their advertising efforts targeted towards the younger audiance that u speak of. I'm not sure if it's gonna focus on celica advertising, but my guess is that it covers Toyota advertising in general. U guys wanna share some views that i might relay to them? I plan on telling them that they need to make more "hip" comercials and make an effort to excite the aftermarket industry in their cars more... which in turn will give Toyota cars a more sporty image. At the same time they can't over do it like Hyundi does with the new Tiburon... making it look like a ghetto riceboy car. I don't find it appealing how Hyundi try so hard to show people that the Tiburon can be a cool car to mod (all at the pics on their web site of the car with 18" rims, wack paint jobs, etc). They have to let the aftermarket come to it.

Newayz, I'll update on how it went afterwards....

[HilfigerCelica]

I'd lay off the SUV's. Whether you like the SUV's or not, they are one of Toyota's most popular sellers. Let's face the facts, trucks sell and sell very well at that. Ford sold more F150's than Toyota sold vehicle last year. Try to emphasize the fact that they aren't marketing the "hip" vehicles like they should. And they need to have an image car and promote it.

[Keyshawn]

Toyota Motor Corp.
19300 Gramercy Place
Torrance, CA 90501
310-787-1310

Good luck with the letter to Toyota, man. I'll have to think about all your points before I give my input. If you'd like to review some comments from that older thread, look here: http://www.newcelica.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15652

[My2ktoy]

$20 bucks says they don't read past the second paragraph, and write you an email saying "thank you very much, your thoughts are being considered."

[t2000gts]

they don't market the celica as much anymore cuz it's older now for one thing, doesn't really need marketing for the main demographic, everyone knows about it now, and they don't want to show commercials of people driving 6-speeds, and invite newbies to buy them and misshift. and they don't want to invite them to buy GTS Autos thinking about performance either.

on the other hand, that issue hasn't come up with the matrix yet, so you see commercials like this:

http://www.matrixvibe.net/files

[Lomeinhu]

All right, thanks guys, your thoughts are being considered....j/k

Yeah, I might take out the SUV part, but I think I still need to emphasize the market saturation point. Is there any other way to say that there's no need for so many SUV's?

I also didn't mean to make it this long. ONe of the reasons that I wanted you guys to read it was that you can pick out the stuff that makes the point so i can get rid of the rest. Take this as draft, then. I don't think whoever's gonna read will actually read it all, either.

One more thing: I didn't want to sound like I had written this letter so that Toyota will favor the Celica, but I think I had done that anyways. I wanted to avoid the thinking that I'm just an particular enthusiast who wants more aftermarket stuff, but rather that Toyota's entire marketing strategy need to be clearer and more direct before they head out and mass-market this Scion brand. Oh, I forgot to put in that dealers might have a difficult time handling all the different vehicles.

Anyways, I'll just edit the first post as we go along, so you won't have to scroll down so much to read it.

[Lomeinhu]

Just edited it...not much shorter, I'm afraid.

[HilfigerCelica]

Originally posted by lomeinhu


Yeah, I might take out the SUV part, but I think I still need to emphasize the market saturation point. Is there any other way to say that there's no need for so many SUV's?




Nope, cause like I've been saying, trucks and SUV's sell. You can't ignore what consumers what. I can bet that Toyota sells more Tacoma's than Celica, MR2's, and Echo's put together. And these cars are aimed at the youth market too. I think you need to state how they need to improve their image as being a young person's car.

[WillyK]

I think it sounds pretty damn good myself

[CelicaDetective]

Too long. I am deterred not to read the whole thing because I have a job to do. I would say "get to the point" and *shoot* into the trashcan.

MP

[theotherredline]

OKay, First off, adress it to somebody. Find out the name of the person you wish to send it to. People look at that, and say "he didnt even take the time to get my name?" Secondly, its way too long. The person who reads it has a job to do. That persons job isnt to read a long letter. be concise and to the point.

Just my suggestion...constructive criticism

[Lomeinhu]

Thanks for the comments guys...i've been really trying to cut it down. However, I also don't want it too short so that it doesn't seem like a well thought-out letter. I wish I had the name of the person, perhaps the marketing manager's name. David D. may help? I'm working on a shorter version right now, so hold on, it's coming soon. Oh, it comes out to be around 2 pages printed in font size 12, single spaced, so the forum makes it look a little longer than it is.

[Miguel GTS]

man make it short and to the point nobody likes to read letter of complaint so your goingto have to cut this down to one page


other wise your going to get the first part read then trash

[ringthree]

Please do not limit the length of the letter based upon suggestions here. The attention span of the normal person that would read the letter is not equal to one of someone here.

Ultimately you have good criticisms but they are about 3-4 years out of date (maybe more). The Scion brand extension has probably been in the works for at least that long. The Japanese generally have much longer term planning strategies when it comes to marketing and product delivery. Point is just because we are seeing new ideas and new cars doesn't mean that they haven't existed for quite some time.

I would try to be a little more predictive of the future market. I agree with you about SUV's. There are too many options and you are already seeing the failure of several models because the market doesn't exist like it used to. I think that the future there will soon collapse, with people switching to sedans and even (gasp) station wagons, instead of SUV's. I doubt an SUV buyer will repeat with another SUV purchase. Which limits the future of the market.

Those are my opinions. Take em or leave em. But you have a very well written letter. The problem is finding an audience. I agree with someone that said above that you should address it to someone, but I dont think that it's like a resume. As busy as Toyota is I believe that they will at least take a look at it, it may still be ignored, but I dont think they will just ignore out of hand.

[Lomeinhu]

Again, thanks for all your comments. If this letter can make a point that at least stays in the back of the minds of some corporate executives in Toyota, I'd be happy. This is like writing to a politician: a secretary might be reading it, but just b/c the politician doesn't read it, doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up.

ringthree: I've cut the letter down to 1 and 1/2 pages. I'll sent it by express mail, not email, so it'll increase the chance of it being read (esp. if I get a specific name). And what updates do you suggest? Any particulars?

[Lomeinhu]

hmmm....kuno: less speculation, more factual. ringthree: less factual, more speculation. What to do? what to do? :)

[Miguel GTS]

that is way better man and what i am telling you is from going through a Tech writing class and that class states that the shorter a complaint paper the better make it short but not limited

[Lomeinhu]

Thanks miguel.

After some suggestions from fellow members, I've decided to split the letter up. This is to make it more concise and also that more than 1 person has concerns about it. I'll post the split letters up when I get to writing them. Thanks again.Oh, BTW, any suggestions for other concerns?

[Lomeinhu]

Here's my 1st split letter. I hope it's ok. Again, any suggestions will be welcomed. I left the original on top so you can compare them.

"
To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to address a concern that I share with many of my fellow Toyota drivers. While we collectively own a wide range of Toyota vehicles, we are all driving enthusiasts who have been loyal to the Toyota badge. Our issue deals with the upcoming Scion cars targeted towards the youngest drivers, and we believe that there are two main problems with this marketing plan.

First, Scion is overshooting the demographic. Scion was created so that Toyota does not suffer Oldsmobile

[Lomeinhu]

Here's the second. It leaves out Scion and concentrates more on Toyota's overall strategy.

"
To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you to voice my concern over Toyota

[Lomeinhu]

No suggestions, anyone? I think some ppl may be confused as to what these letters are trying to accomplish. We often talk about TRD not making any parts for the Celica. That's hardly convincing for a corporate head to do anything about it. It's only when they see it as beneficial to the company as a whole and/or a necessary step towards keeping up with competition will they start doing anything about it. Of course, my concerns go a little broader than TRD, and it's that Toyota's slipping in brand image. It's a hard point to argue, b/c it's mostly subjective, but I also believe it's necessary for a company to undergo some changes once in a while to be fresh. I wrote these letters b/c I like Toyota but of course for those of you who don't really care about Toyota, changes made in TOyota can in turn lead to cars that we want to drive. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?